Certain beverage preparation machines use capsules containing ingredients to be extracted or to be dissolved; for other machines, the ingredients are stored and dosed automatically in the machine or else are added at the time of preparation of the drink.
Most coffee or other beverage preparation machines possess filling means that include a pump for liquid, usually water, which pumps the liquid from a source of water that is cold or indeed heated through heating means, such as a heating resistor, a thermoblock or the like. Such filling means are usually controlled via a control unit of the machine, typically including a printed circuit board with a controller.
For allowing the user to interact with such machines, for providing operation instructions to the machine or obtaining feed-back there from, various systems have been disclosed in the art, for instance as mentioned in the following references: AT 410 377, CH 682 798, DE 44 29 353, DE 202 00 419, DE 20 2006 019 039, DE 2007 008 590, EP 1 302 138, EP 1 448 084, EP 1 676 509, EP 08155851.2, FR 2 624 844, GB 2 397 510, U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,049, U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,735, U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,419, U.S. Pat. No. 4,767,632, U.S. Pat. No. 4,954,697, U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,020, U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,705, U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,061, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,508, U.S. Pat. No. 5,731,981, U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,230, U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,236, U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,869, U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,555, U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,341, U.S. Pat. No. 6,759,072, US 2007/0157820, WO 97/25634, WO99/50172, WO 2004/030435, WO 2004/030438, WO 2006/063645, WO 2006/090183, WO 2007/003062, WO 2007/003990, WO 2008/104751, WO 2008/138710, WO 2008/138820 and WO 2009/016490.
Nowadays beverage preparation machines provide an increasing number of different functionalities. This makes the beverage preparation machines of more interest and of a higher value for the user but on the other hand makes it more difficult for the user to maintain the machine and to monitor all the functionalities.